Cisco is investigating the probity of unnamed resellers in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries, to determine whether or not it could be exposed to violations of US anti-bribery laws.
The company first discussed the allegations in this December 23 blog post, which went under the radar in the lead-up to Christmas. The …

Packet-pusher Juniper Networks is under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, it has emerged.
The regulators are pursuing the company over "possible violations" of the anti-bribery US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company revealed in its 10-Q filing with the SEC on Thursday …

The trial of former Systemax director Carl Fiorentino has been moved from New York to Florida, where he was based when the alleged bribery offences are claimed to have occurred.
Fiorentino, a one-time president of subsidiary Tiger Direct, stands accused of pocketing more than $7m in kickbacks from component suppliers in Taiwan …

Microsoft says it will cooperate with US investigators probing alleged bribery of foreign officials. It's claimed Redmond's resellers bunged cash to apparatchiks in Russia and Pakistan in return for contracts with state-backed businesses.
The software giant's deputy general counsel John Frank blogged here that his company takes …

Microsoft has responded to the WSJ's accusations that its business partners bribed Chinese officials in exchange for software contracts, by noting that it is reviewing the allegations and may find dirt.
The company published a statement on Tuesday in response to the WSJ's report that lawyers from both the Justice Department and …

Former Systemax director Carl Fiorentino has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he pocketed millions of dollars in backhanders in return for directing trade towards specific PC component makers.
Fiorentino appeared in the Eastern District Court of New York on Monday to face allegations made last month that he made more …

A US federal judge has refused to agree to a settlement between the SEC and IBM over charges dating back to 2011 alleging that Big Blue bribed Chinese and South Korean officials unless the company produces a whole new set of extensive compliance reports.
Judge Richard Leon, who has been reviewing the settlement case for the past …

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has agreed to settle an outstanding action over inducements paid by Oracle India to secure government contracts.
The SEC filing notes that between 2005 and 2007 Oracle India siphoned off around $2.2m from eight different contracts with the Indian government that were worth $6.7m in …

A former general manager at one of e-commerce giant Alibaba’s web businesses has been arrested by Chinese police on suspicion of bribery, as the scandal-hit firm struggles to move on from long-standing allegations of corruption.
China’s biggest e-commerce business revealed the news on Thursday that Yan Limin, until recently …

Huawei and ZTE suffered a PR blow this week after it emerged that executives from the company had been convicted of bribery offences in Algeria and sentenced in their absence to ten years each in jail.
Local French language news site Presse-DZ reported that international arrest warrants had been issued for ZTE's Dong Tao and …

The White House has said it won’t be responding to a petition calling for an investigation into whether comments by MPAA head Chris Dodd about paying for political support constituted an admission of bribery.
Shortly after SOPA and PIPA were kicked into the long grass by nervous legislators, Dodd - himself a former senator – …

Chris Dodd, ex–US senator and current CEO of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, may face a White House investigation after he made an extraordinary outburst that appeared to threaten politicians who had the audacity to take the entertainment industry’s money and then abandon SOPA/PIPA online-piracy legislation.
“Those who count …

Labour rights groups have warned a US Congressional hearing that severe flaws in the auditing process of technology production facilities in China threaten to undermine the efforts of big name tech brands to ensure their kit is produced in legal and humane conditions.
Li Qiang, founder of non-governmental organisation China …

The Government has delayed the implementation of the Bribery Act. It will not now come into force in April as planned, but will be put on hold while the Government rewrites guidance for businesses on how to comply with the 2010 law.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has not said when new guidance will be published but has said that …

US officials have charged more than a dozen former executives and contractors of Siemens of conspiring to spend $100 million in bribes to secure a $1 billion contract to produce national identity cards for Argentine citizens.
A criminal indictment filed on Tuesday against eight former officials of the German industrial giant …

Alcatel-Lucent has agreed to pay the US government $137m to drop probes of illegal kickbacks it allegedly paid to win contracts in Latin America and Asia.
The payout will close a regulatory investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission, and a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
"We take responsibility for …

The Bribery Act will not lead to a large number of prosecutions and will not outlaw corporate hospitality, the Government has said in long-awaited guidance on last year's Bribery Act.
The guidance also makes it clear that small companies could communicate their anti-bribery policies orally and still meet the requirements of the …

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, HTTP server visionary and founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, has penned a blog post on the European Commission web site titled Net neutrality is critical for Europe's future.
Sir Tim defines net neutrality as “ the principle that each ‘packet’ of data must be treated equally by the network” and says …

The Department of Justice is demanding HP hands over a pile of documents related to its Russian business as part of a bribery investigation in Germany.
German corruption investigators are probing allegations that the ink giant paid bribes to secure a contract with the Russian Prosecutor General's office.
It is alleged that an € …

Alcatel-Lucent is facing a refreshed raft of trouble: a US federal judge has decided that Costa Rican telecommunication company ICE can challenge the US$137 million criminal settlement between the vendor and the US Department of Justice finalised last year.
ICE received approval last week to seek victim status in the bribery …

Storage software supplier FalconStor has completely re-written its core product, hoping its new FreeStor product will revitalise its business.
FalconStor's virtualising IPStor technology became widely used but began falling behind when the firm lost its guiding light CEO ReiJane Huawai in 2011. A subsequent Fed law case related …

HP is facing a widened bribery investigation by the Department of Justice and US financial regulators, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveals.
In its quarterly filing HP said that the US Department of Justice and the SEC were both investigating allegations of dubious dealing by the ink giant in Russia …

A new bribery law has been passed by the Houses of Commons and Lords but is not yet in force. The Bribery Act can penalise companies whose employees engage in bribery if the company did not have adequate policies in place to prevent it.
The law gives a more certain definition of what bribery is and updates a law that was seen as …

Microsoft's search bribery machine shut down for several hours on Black Friday, continuing to exhibit a unique talent for online comedy.
In May, as part of a desperate bid to boost traffic, Microsoft began bribing people to use its second rate search engine. If you use Live Search ads to find and buy certain stuff, Redmond will …

UK banks will receive real-time warnings about threats to their customers' accounts as well as the overall integrity of their banking systems from a new financial crime alert system.
Financial Crime Alerts Service (FCAS), which is being rolled out by banking industry association BBA, is designed to allow financial crime …

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging that the company paid bribes to government officials in China and South Korea to secure deals for the sale of mainframe and PCs among different government agencies.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the District of …

Andy Coulson, the ex-News of the World editor and erstwhile spin doctor to Prime Minister David Cameron, has been found guilty at the Old Bailey in London of conspiring to hack phones.
Former News International boss Rebekah Brooks was cleared on all counts of hacking into voicemails, bribery and perverting the course of justice …

US Securities and Exchange Commission regulators are reportedly probing bribery allegations against tech giant HP, after its Moscow headquarters were raided by Russian investigators earlier this week.
German and Russian authorities are already looking into claims that HP bribed its way to victory in a big contract. They ordered …

Bing has boosted Microsoft's retailer revenues by nearly 50 per cent, according to a new search-ad study.
With a report released this morning, the click counters at SearchIgnite tell the world that during the first half of the all-important fourth quarter, US retailers spend 47 per cent more on Redmondian search ads they did …

Microsoft has sued ten John Does for allegedly pilfering money from its search bribery machine.
Last May, in a desperate attempt to catch the uncatchable Google, Redmond began bribing people to use its third-rate search engine, Live Search. If you used search ads to find and buy certain stuff, Redmond would return a portion of …

A US judge has ruled that the Feds can have access to a Gmail user’s entire account to search for evidence in a money laundering case, a decision which clashes with at least two other recent rulings on email privacy.
New York District Judge Gabriel Gorenstein said in an opinion that email accounts were the same as hard drives as …

Sun Microsystems, which is in the middle of a $5.6bn acquisition by software giant Oracle, said in its 10-Q quarterly financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may have broken bribery laws overseas. The 10-Q filing also put some numbers on what Sun will have to pay if the Oracle acquisition does not go …

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has never been one to hide his opinions. Now the father of the World Wide Web is up in arms about the state of net neutrality in the United States.
In a chat with the Washington Post Sir Tim railed against the telecommunications companies' push to introduce differential pricing for internet content – such as …

Microsoft is pulling the plug on its search bribery machine. The Bing Cashback program — which actually paid people to use Microsoft's third-rate search engine — will vanish on July 30.
In May 2008, as part of its desperate bid to catch the uncatchable Google, Microsoft began bribing people to use Live Search, Bing's precursor. …

Lee Kun-hee, the chair of Samsung Electronics, has reportedly been hospitalised and is receiving “emergency treatment” for a heart ailment.
South Korean news service Yonhap has published rolling reports suggesting Lee, 72, experienced shortness of breath on Saturday evening, was subsequently hospitalised and required …

Further details have emerged regarding the US Department of Justice case against UK-headquartered arms globocorp BAE Systems. The feds - without argument from BAE - say that the company engaged in a "conspiracy" to violate several US laws in recent years.
In particular, the Justice department alleges that BAE broke a promise …

An employee who worked for President Obama's pick for federal CIO has been arrested by the FBI and charged in a federal bribery sting, according to news reports.
Yusuf Acar, 40, was taken custody Thursday under suspicion of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for awarding contracts, according to The Washington Post and …

German prosecutors searched the home of Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann in August, it has emerged, and have questioned staff about alleged bribes paid in the form of dividends to stifle Macedonian competition.
The investigation was kicked off in 2007 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which were tipped off when PwC …

The FBI has arrested 22 people, including three Brits, in a classic bribery sting.
Investigators used a supposed African defence minister to lend credence to their claim to be looking for someone to sell them arms for a Presidential guard unit. As part of the deal, the accused allegedly agreed to a 20 per cent bung to be paid to …

Updated
Microsoft's search bribery machine is on the fritz. Again.
Last May, in a desperate bid to catch the uncatchable Google, Redmond began bribing people to use its third-rate search engine, Live Search. If you use Live Search ads to find and buy certain stuff, Microsoft will return a portion of the purchase price. They call it …

Another senior figure at Siemens AG has been named as a suspect in the ongoing investigation into allegations of bribery at the industrial giant.
Former chief finance officer Heinz-Joachim Neuburger was interviewed by investigators last week and is now considered a suspect. Neuburger has previously denied any involvement in the …

Board game review
I love bluffing games. Most games have an element of bluffing, even simple games like Uno can be played with a bit of deception – a sneaky tactic is to change the colour to something different from your last card, but generally that's a poor decision to do odds wise. Games that focus on deceit have that extra human layer to them …

In 2008, HSBC IT exec Hervé Falciani blew the whistle on the huge tax-avoidance maneuvers used by some of the planet's wealthiest people. This week, sensitive documents obtained by the 43-year-old have been published online for the world to see.
Falciani has fled across Europe, swerved extradition requests, and, fearing for his …

Microsoft wants you to know that its Live Search bribery program has seen "positive traction," claiming that searchified cashback offers have resulted in a significant return on investment for its advertisers. The question is whether Microsoft will ever see ROI for itself.
In May, as part of its desperate bid to boost traffic, …

Lars Nyberg resigned as CEO of TeliaSonera, the main telco of Sweden and Finland, following accusations that he and the board failed to properly investigate the Uzbekistani business with whom TeleSonera worked when expanding into that country.
Nordic lawyers Mannheimer Swartling carried out the investigation, at TeliaSonera's …

Manufacturing behemoth Foxconn has revealed it is working with police to investigate allegations of bribery against employees suspected of seeking illegal payments from supply chain partners.
The Taiwanese firm, which churns out kit for Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HP and others, made the revelations after an article appeared in local …

Microsoft has stitched together its product search engine with the company’s Live Search Cashback service ahead of the relaunch of its clunky, Google-wannabe brand.
The company confirmed the move in a blog post yesterday. It said bringing the two services under one roof would “make it easier for you to research, compare products …

South Korean law enforcement authorities have arrested two Hynix executives, charging them with bribery, local reports claim.
Details remain sketchy, but one of the two executives is alleged to have bought KRW70m ($67,908) worth of shares from a Hynix sub-contractor for just KRW30m ($29,104), according to a Yonhap report.
In …

A famous loose-cannon/American billionaire has a plan for unseating Google from its search-engine throne - and at a mere $1bn, his idea is significantly less expensive than the billions Microsoft is sinking into that Bing thing.
Broadcast.com co-founder and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's idea is simplicity itself: Just pay …

During 2010, Apple audited the facilities and management practices of 127 of its worldwide suppliers, and found instances of underage labor, unsafe working conditions, inadequate safety devices, lack of first-aid supplies, improper handling of hazardous chemicals, excessive recruitment fees, and more. Much more.
And if Apple's …